Thursday, July 25, 2013

The Last Great Star Trek Movie

It is this author's wish to point that this is a writ of opinion. It is a statement of adoration for the ideas and maybe not so much the end result. That said, it will discuss the modes and concepts and perhaps less of the finished film. This writer also assumes the reader has seen and has a working knowledge of the film and so will not explain the plot here.




Star Trek Generations is "the middle child" of Trek films. It doesn't have the sense of self as the original series films did nor does it have the ramped up brew-ha-ha of the Next Generation films. Its sort of stuck between gears. It doesn't quite distinguish its self in any manner and seems to be perfectly fine with that. So at the end of the day, there may be no one who says Star Trek Generations is their favorite film. Even I am not such a fan of it to say that much - but I do enjoy it a lot more than most. It was the right movie for the right time in my life - I was in Middle School about to hit High School and I saw it in a second-run theater the next town over. It was a TNG episode made a bit larger and had an actor I'd just discovered as the villain and things exploded and Picard was as oxford button-down as ever. It hit all the right notes.

And yet, its not the best foot forward for the transition from the long loved original cast and the 1980s group of relative penny players.

This is not to say Generations is a bad film but its also far from even trying at being a perfect film. It suffers from uneven qualities, particularly the fact that director David Carson shoots it exactly like a television series. It has a very flat, very "pilot episode" feel to the camera framing and how the film is paced. Outside of some nice protracted shots, its extremely static in its movements throughout, almost robotic at times. It also doesn't help that Dennis McCarthy's score is dialed out of the sound mix quite a bit (the recent GNP Crescendo two-disc reveals a greater depth to the score) or that the villain is basically Trek's answer to Moonraker's Hugo Drax. Malcolm McDowell makes the most of it, as he has made a career in doing so much with so little. (He was doing exactly the same with the Wing Commander PC games when Generations was being shot.)

This said, the film has a beautiful lighting scheme (one of the best I've ever seen in any '90s film, actually), has some terrific special effects and model shots and, at least as tone goes, one of the best in the last thirty years for big screen sci-fi.

Wait, what? Yes, in terms of its intent, Generations is in a lot of ways a great, thoughtful, even meaningful outing. Despite its culmination of milquetoast space opera, the largely unfinished ideas still have a great deal of weight.

* Generations is a flip on Its A Wonderful Life

The most obvious influence on Generations is the classic Capra Christmas film. Putting aside the fact that both films feature the Yuletide season, rethink it like this: both learn the same lesson by going in opposite directions.

Captain Picard / George Bailey has struggled hard his whole life and made sacrifices to get where he is. Unfortunately, the past comes crashing down on him - Capra has it be Uncle Billy losing the bank deposit which then snowballs into desperation, Picard's loss is both his brother and nephew in a fire which spirals into despair - and both finds himself lost and without much guidance, considers sacrificing himself (though George Bailey considers suicide, Picard simply allows himself to be a hostage exchange - one is far more dynamic, the other is more passive) and both are ultimately lead back to real life through a Dante's Inferno style journey.



Here is where things get flipped: when George Bailey jumps off the bridge to save Clarence, he's given the gift of seeing the world without him. Its a personal hell: his wife is an old librarian, his house is empty and dark, his friends don't know him, his town is what passes for loose morals in 1946. Bailey pleads for the fantasy to not be real, to go back to reality because that's where his life, where he's earned his person, lives and he is ultimately rewarded for that. He rejects the pain of what he wanted for what he has and found a spiritual epiphany.

On the other hand, Picard unwittingly enters into The Nexus, he finds the perfect life. A wife (that looks exactly like Beverly Crusher but... isn't? I still don't get that), children, his nephew still alive, a beautiful home at Christmas... but its all unearned. And despite the relative ease that staying in the Nexus would allow - a perfect, immortal life bound to your whims and will - Picard knows that it has no value. "This isn't real", he slowly says to Guinan, who then suggests Picard seek out his own version of Clarance - James Kirk.

*You Can't Have Picard Without Kirk

John Adams famously said "I must study politics and war, that our sons may have liberty to study mathematics and philosophy." and that is basically the Kirk / Picard dynamic. While Picard is a refined Renaissance man with great speeches and internal values, he wouldn't have existed at all without a cowboy, rolled-shirt-sleeve intergalactic badass like Jim Kirk. Something that is lost on most of the people my age and younger is that as great as the other Captains are, the reason Kirk is the best is because he represents the bold, youthful enthusiasm of America's dreams being realized during its turbulent times in the 60s. Kirk is, quite literally, modeled after JFK (Captain Archer on the other hand is, quite literally, modeled after George W Bush).

In an unusual bit of writing, Kirk starts off with having the same misgivings about the Nexus as Picard does. He wants to accept what he sees, his old house, the clock he'd given McCoy, his long dead dog Butler. The Nexus, in a "Faustian Deal" type of way, is tempting Kirk with the best moment possible: its the day he decided to go back to Starfleet instead of stay with Antonia, a woman who coos his name from up the bedroom stairs. Now Kirk is left with the same moral dilemma that Picard just went through - do I stay true to who I am (as a person) or do I stay true to what I am (as an example)?

Whats interesting is that Kirk holds on to the fantasy much harder, much to Picard's disbelief. Kirk wants the fantasy to be real - he's farmed out, he's older and the story points of age from Wrath Of Khan have caught up to him. Its only when his horse jumps a gorge that he realizes that this isn't what he'd want: where Picard rejected his fantasy because he didn't earn the family life he was given by the Nexus, Kirk rejects the Nexus because there is no thrill. The thrill is gone. What both men wanted most in life are only given as shadow figures and both arrive to the same conclusion from different angles of perception.



* Generations basically disproves the Star Trek II & III morals by advancing them

At the end of Nick Meyer's Star Trek II, Spock has made the ultimate sacrifice - by exposing himself to lethal amounts of radiation in a sacrifice play to save the ship and its crew. It is probably the most dramatic act of any Trek series and for good reason - Spock had long been a pop icon by this point and to see him act both heroically and totally in character created a greater respect. "The needs of the many, out weight the needs of the few..." says Kirk, and Spock corrects with "Or the one" as he slowly dies.

Star Trek III more or less undoes this. The pathos and pain Kirk has rightly earned in Wrath Of Khan is pushed aside with spiritualism mumbo-jumbo and a wave of a writer's magic wand. This isn't to say that its a bad movie - truthfully, I think the third film is dramatically better written and is in many ways a superior film, but thats for another discussion - but the character growth is very much dialed back, especially since Kirk marginalizes the Death Of Spock by... resurrecting Spock literally.

Even as a child, I thought the "literal resurrection" thing was a huge cop-out. Without knowing how to verbalize it at the time, I felt that the film should've been about finding out the kind of person Spock was and that he was still alive, even in death, through Kirk and his friends. This would be a tremendously difficult thing to write but like Nimoy himself said - unless the movie ends with Spock being alive, people will hate it. Unfortunate but too true; and even if they had made the third film like I proposed here, there would be a huge missing piece of Trek in all future installments.

And thats why Generations is so great: it forces Kirk to die. Not just write him out, but have a meaningful, even meta-level death. He never comes back (unless you count books, and I don't). And to be honest: Kirk dies terribly. Of all the things you'd think would have killed the Captain of the Enterprise over the years - Khan, Kruge, the Doomsday Machine, the salt vampire, Gary Mitchell, the God entity at the center of the galaxy - its instead some jerk scientist who's unwilling to let go of the past - which is in a lot of ways what our heroes are forced to do.

Kirk's end is more or less a pedestrian death; like how Douglas MacArthur died from cirrhosis or George Patton who died paralyzed days after a car accident. The great men of history often die indignantly. No blaze of glory, no charge of the light brigade - in this case, it was just helping complete yet another mission and it happens to go wrong. In a way, that makes it all the more heavy. There is a, well, reality to it all.


Captain Kirk, the man who admitted to cheating death but never facing it, who has lead countless red shirts to die in various scenarios both legitimate (name them yourself) and not (I'll go out on a limb and recount the TOS episode "Obsession") finally completes his journey by doing what every great General does: leads by example. This is especially poignant since his death affirms Picard's character arc. Kirk shows Picard how to die and that its not something to be feared or saddening. Just look how Picard acts when he finds out his brother and nephew die versus his thoughts when picking through the crashed Enterprise bridge at the end: he is at peace, despite the fact that he's basically picking through his own burned-to-the-ground home as an echo of his brother's vineyard. The final dialogue exchange is also telling:
Picard: Someone once told me that time was a predator that stalked us all our lives. I rather believe that time is a companion who goes with us on the journey and reminds us to cherish every moment, because it will never come again. What we leave behind is not as important as how we've lived. After all Number One, we're only mortal.
Riker: Speak for yourself sir, I plan to live forever.
Riker hasn't learned the lesson himself. Maybe he's next? Or perhaps its just youthful arrogance.

* Generations was right, the JJ Abrams reboot is wrong

The cusp of Generations is that life goes on, even after death. That people will continue to be people, no matter how many tragedies pile up and how many horrible people plot against the greater good.

Unfortunately, the Abrams reboots are little more than window dressing. Putting aside the basic Hollywood reason that all reboots should exist simply as grave robbery for the sake of a dollar, the 2009 movie's overarching point is "you CAN go home again" and what's so infuriating is that you can't. No one can. Short of time-traveling back to the late 60s and hiring the same writers, Star Trek as it was is just that - as it was. And the new films exist more as brand acknowledgement (Kirk, Spock, names we're familiar with) and not as new ways to tell stories but old ways to ruin what was once singular. Look no further than the fact that the films want to be reboots and start fresh but are also drowned in references to the original timeline.

If Generations is the sad, stoic funeral of a family member, the reboot movies are the loud, obnoxious five year old who doesn't know what a funeral is, doesn't know what is going on and definitely doesn't want to be there.

* Generations is about reverence as much as letting go

A lot of people like Star Trek VI. I'm not really one of them anymore. Despite probably the best looking bridge in any Trek appearance, some fine acting and a great bad guy - its nothing more than a Scooby Doo episode. Kirk and McCoy are the Shaggy and Scooby of the story, with Spock left behind like Fred at the Mystery Machine and when they figure out whos behind the plot, they even take a rubber mask off the assassin.

What I did like about it is the themes. Putting aside the heavy-handed "Hey, this is the Soviet Union dissolving", the fact that it has the gall to say "It's time to out your toys away" to the characters - Spock all but says this, calmly musing if the crew is too old to be of any use anymore - at least acknowledges that as much good as any one person or groups of people can do, they only last so long for the next great generation to come along. Undiscovered Country touches on this briefly, perhaps more eloquently, where as Generations makes it its case to prove.


(As an aside, its pretty obvious that the closing credits for STVI was the jumping off point for the music tone for Generations. Both have a sense of reverence and reflection to them that is lacking in subsequent scores - and for good reason: these two films are about looking back, not forward.)

And ultimately, Generations is about letting go. Its about moving on. When TNG was announced in 1986, a lot of old Trek fans cried foul because, well, how dare they make a series without the original characters. How dare they do something new? And this film, in part, is a reaction to that response. Its saying "move on", and I suppose in a way, "grow up". In the end, Kirk had to do that and like Picard, we should follow that example.

1 comment:

  1. Perhaps the greatest review of this film I have ever read.

    I think with both of us being 31, liking movies like this and The Thin Red Line, and hating the Trek reboots ... we might be long lost twins!

    Anyway this was just great. Have you ever listened to the audio commentary for Generations by Ronald D Moore and Brannon Braga. It is refreshingly honest and straightforward. They talk about what works and what doesn't and admit Star Trek (this was long before the reboot but after Enterprise) is kind of dead.

    Anyway, you got yourself a regular reader.

    Will

    ReplyDelete